Text 11013, 85 rader
Skriven 2005-04-03 17:11:28 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av VERN HUMPHREY
Ärende: Re: Bo Gritz
====================
-> Because we're talking about the Catholic Church -- I have already posted
-> comments (and so have you) from earlier periods which clearly show the
-> withholding of food and water in order to kill someone is unacceptable.

Generally unacceptable, with qualifications and exceptions.  Notice some
of the same equivocations in the story in last Sunday's Washington Post:

[the story also goes on to say that the Schindlers sought support from
Bishop Lynch.  Lynch not only refused to support them but went so far as
to issue a public statement that the decision should be left to the
husband!  Since then he has reversed position on that!]


- - - - -

Pope John Paul II has said feeding tubes are "morally obligatory" for
most patients in vegetative states, and high-ranking cardinals have
followed up by referring to Schiavo, saying that removing her feeding
tube could lead to legalized euthanasia.

 Theologians disagree about whether the pope is altering Catholic
tradition, but there is consensus across the ideological spectrum that
the Vatican's position in the Schiavo case has given Roman Catholics a
new calculus for end-of-life decision making.

"This is the most authoritative statement we have to date," said Richard
M. Doerflinger, vice president of the Pro-Life Secretariat of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops and an opponent of ending Schiavo's
feeding.

Before this case, before the pope's statement, even conservatives such
as Doerflinger say there was enough of a debate about the Catholic
position that a person could choose which side to take: continue or
discontinue tube-feeding. But now the pope and the cardinals have made
much more definitive statements that Doerflinger and his polar opposites
agree seem to require Catholics to continue with tube-feeding, as long
as it "provides nourishment" and "alleviates suffering."

The debate is far from an academic exercise. Its ultimate answers could
affect how Catholics draw up their living wills and influence the
decisions at the end of life now being faced by Schiavo's deeply divided
family. And the church's evolving stance on feeding-tube cases may end
up as one of the most lasting legacies of the Schiavo controversy.

Some prominent theologians argue that the pope is contradicting his
recent predecessors by declaring that food and water are morally
obligatory "basic care" and, as the Rev. John Paris, a bioethicist at
Boston College, put it, "wholly upending four centuries of consistent
Catholic moral analysis." Other prominent Catholic thinkers believe the
Vatican is merely updating the church's position to reflect modern
medical advances.

Catholics have been wrestling with the ethics and obligations of
technologically advanced life-sustaining treatment for decades, a debate
that surged with the cases of Nancy Cruzan, Karen Ann Quinlan and others
whose court fights established much of the legal precedent being applied
to Schiavo. Conservative Catholics, such as Doerflinger, argued that
patients should not be disconnected, except in rare instances. Others
argued that centuries of Roman Catholic tradition allowed patients to be
disconnected if they had no hope of recovery.

That uncertainty left Catholics free to decide: disconnect or don't
disconnect. Either way, they would not have sinned, Doerflinger said, as
long as they "prayerfully considered" the dilemma and followed the moral
argument they felt was most persuasive. Before the pope made his
statement about feeding-tube cases at a conference last year,
Doerflinger said there was enough uncertainty about the church's
position that Catholics could remove feeding tubes without fear of
committing a sin.

"No one could fairly have said to you that you were dissenting from
clear Catholic teaching," Doerflinger said. "Now you would have to say,
'Yes, you are.' "

On this point, Doerflinger's ideological opposites agree with him,
saying the pope's stance has greatly narrowed the morally acceptable
conditions under which Catholic patients and their families can remove
life-sustaining care. "He's overshot the mark by drawing a line in the
sand on withdrawing nutrition," said James J. Walter, a bioethicist at
Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who has written extensively
about the Catholic tradition in end-of-life cases.


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